May 01, 2007

Dork 'O The Day To Ye

I am saddened that most people say there were 32 victims of the Virginia Tech slayings on April 16. I do agree that Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people before taking his own life; however, Cho was a victim as well.

Yeah, the guy who sealed off the exit to a building and went about on a premeditated, indiscriminate killing spree was a "victim." A guy who sent a self-glorifying, rambling, hateful video of himself to NBC just prior to said killing spree was a "victim."

One of Cho's professors requested that he be removed from her class. She also claims that her students stopped showing up for class because they were intimidated by him. She says, "there was something mean about this boy," stating he would come to class wearing sunglasses and a hat. He was eventually forced to take his class one-on-one with a different professor.

Gee, it's almost as if Cho was TRYING to be intimidating. Left out of this clown's bleeding heart "letter of the day" was Cho's fantastic writings, which would have made Freddy Krueger a tad uncomfortable.

I don't know about anyone else, but I see plenty of students coming to class wearing hats and sunglasses who aren't immediately labeled as "mean" or "scary." It seems he was continuously singled out from the crowd, which would make anyone feel hurt or resentment toward those in "the crowd."

You know, it's been about 10 years since I was in college, but as I recall it was a place where "interesting" self-expression was the norm rather than the exception. There were goths, and there were stoners, and there was even a self-proclaimed "vampire" in one of my newspaper practicum classes who consistently wore the same black outfit and, according to rumor, slept in a coffin. But, crazy creepy as even he was, he was able to engage with other people, and was actually quite funny, in a "stay-away-from-my-neck" sort of way. In other words, college students, typically, can handle quite a fair share of weirdness in their fellow students. So, if students found Cho a bit unsettling, I'm betting there was a bit more to it than a hat and sunglasses.

Cho gave out many warning signs, all of which seem to have been overlooked by society.

Ummm, no, as you mentioned earlier, those warning signs weren't overlooked. Cho's fellow students, or "the crowd," apparently made it painfully clear Cho scared the living hell out of them.

He threatened to kill himself, there was a temporary detention order issued, and he was placed in a mental health facility.

With enough time in an inpatient facility, a professional should have been able to see there was something else going on.

And how much time would that be? A week? A month? A year? How long would it take for this imaginary "professional" to emerge who would say "You see that young man with the two guns and the empty gaze? He could be trouble, that one."

Was Cho a crazed lunatic who thought of death every minute of the day and finally just snapped in a fit of rage and decided to kill 32 people before killing himself?

No, Cho was a victim of an undereducated, underfunded society that lacks the resources and will to give him, and others like him, the help they need.

ABBY ESCOBAR-HASKINS, ST. PAUL

He was a victim of an undereducated society? What's considered adequate education for singling out a psychotic? Because, it sounds like the VT students pretty much had Cho nailed for the nutball that he was. And underfunded? What the hell does that even mean? He was placed in a mental health facility, for crying out loud. Cho was a crazy man. An insane man. A killer. If he was a victim of anyone, he was a victim of himself.

Wowee, this is a case of your site feed totally feeding me a line. I read this post on Bloglines, which removes formatting like italics, and was going "He has GOT to be kidding".

I can see the writer's point in calling him a victim but Cho wasn't a victim when he murdered 32 people, he was the anti-thesis of a victim, he was the outraged victim lashing out as angrily as possible for whatever perceived slights his deranged mind fed him. He wasn't a victim the day he killed all those people but he was definitely victimized up to that day.

Doesn't excuse him in even the tiniest iota for his deeply hateful and incredibly selfish actions. Not a bit. If there's a heaven and hell, he deserves to boil in oil for all eternity. But that's just semi wishful thinking.

Dude, I'm an old chick, but even I got alone with the goths, and the vampires, and everyother tattoo'd pierced freak of nature that was in my classes. And got to be really good buds with them EVEN considering that I am in law enforcement, and am married to a cop, and they were all out getting high in their cars during the breaks. (Which I kinda enjoyed actually, they'd come back all happy which made the class happy, and then they'd say stupid shit that would crack all of us up, it was cool usually). But there were those, and they usually dropped out at some point in the semester, that just couldn't get into the groove of the class. You could feel the hostility rolling off of them in waves.
Because I'm pretty much a bitch anyway, I always had to get into their space and try to engage them just to see what they were made of, or basically a threat assessment. Would that have made me this guy's target? I don't know, it could go either way, I'm the only one who talked to him and his only connection, or the bitch! How dare she talk to me. It just depends on how his voices were talking to him that day probably.....
Do I have a point with this? Ryan please, you should know better. Like you, I'm rambling. LOL